Category: Transport

Bristol Actions in Solidarity with Rising Tide’s Call to Action: August-September 2007

GOLF COURSES
Parts of 3 golf cours­es were dug up: Tra­cy Park, Wick; Knowle, Stock­wood; and Fil­ton. In Knowle a mes­sage was sprayed up near the club house read­ing “Deca­dent waste of water”.

MOBILE PHONE MAST

GOLF COURSES
Parts of 3 golf cours­es were dug up: Tra­cy Park, Wick; Knowle, Stock­wood; and Fil­ton. In Knowle a mes­sage was sprayed up near the club house read­ing “Deca­dent waste of water”.

MOBILE PHONE MAST
A mobile phone mast at Broomhill, Bris­ling­ton, was sab­o­taged.

NON-PASSENGER RAILWAY LINE
The sin­gle track rail­way line that runs from the Roy­al Port­bury Dock in Avon­mouth to Par­son Street in Bed­min­ster was sab­o­taged. This non-pas­sen­ger line trans­ports cars and fos­sil fuel to the Mid­lands. In a wood­ed area on a straight sec­tion of the line the track was cut three quar­ters of the way through in two places and marked with high vis­i­bil­i­ty paint. A warn­ing ban­ner read­ing: “Stop: Trees on line” was fixed across the line sev­er­al hun­dred yards in front of this on the line. A pile of wood was placed across the line next to the dam­aged part.

This held up the trans­porta­tion of cars for only half an hour, but the repair to the line took at least anoth­er 4 hours.

4x4s
with­in the last 6 months both front tyres punc­tured on 40 4x4s in and around Bris­tol.

A “cor­po­rate enter­tain­ment” com­pa­ny called 4‑Play, which pro­vides off road dri­ving for 4x4s in the south west, had vehi­cles spray paint­ed “4‑play — blow-job the plan­et”.

4x4s disarmed in the city of Stockholm

24th August: a new­ly formed activist group, call­ing itself The Indi­ans of the Con­crete Jun­gle, has struck repeat­ed­ly against SUVs in the cen­tre of Stock­holm over the last weeks. Some 300 of those killer machines have so far been tem­porar­i­ly dis­armed. The Indi­ans deflate the tyres of the SUVs and leave a let­ter to the own­er on the wind­screen, where­in the action is explained (trans­la­tion attached below). Con­sid­er­able fury has arisen among the SUV-own­ers of the city, as evi­dent in the lynch atmos­phere in count­less com­ments on the web­site of the group as well as in var­i­ous army, car and sports com­mu­ni­ties on the web. In one inci­dent, an own­er chased an Indi­an for 20 min­utes. Three Indi­ans have been nabbed by the police – appar­ent­ly giv­ing high pri­or­i­ty to stem­ming this crime – and face var­i­ous crim­i­nal charges. How­ev­er, the group is deter­mined to con­tin­ue tak­ing direct action against SUVs, as they con­sti­tute one of the most provoca­tive and insane sources of unnec­es­sary car­bon emis­sions (inso­far as con­spic­u­ous con­sump­tion of mon­ster vehi­cles is not deemed a gen­uine human need).

24th August: a new­ly formed activist group, call­ing itself The Indi­ans of the Con­crete Jun­gle, has struck repeat­ed­ly against SUVs in the cen­tre of Stock­holm over the last weeks. Some 300 of those killer machines have so far been tem­porar­i­ly dis­armed. The Indi­ans deflate the tyres of the SUVs and leave a let­ter to the own­er on the wind­screen, where­in the action is explained (trans­la­tion attached below). Con­sid­er­able fury has arisen among the SUV-own­ers of the city, as evi­dent in the lynch atmos­phere in count­less com­ments on the web­site of the group as well as in var­i­ous army, car and sports com­mu­ni­ties on the web. In one inci­dent, an own­er chased an Indi­an for 20 min­utes. Three Indi­ans have been nabbed by the police – appar­ent­ly giv­ing high pri­or­i­ty to stem­ming this crime – and face var­i­ous crim­i­nal charges. How­ev­er, the group is deter­mined to con­tin­ue tak­ing direct action against SUVs, as they con­sti­tute one of the most provoca­tive and insane sources of unnec­es­sary car­bon emis­sions (inso­far as con­spic­u­ous con­sump­tion of mon­ster vehi­cles is not deemed a gen­uine human need).

Update: New indi­an tribes has appeared and has struck against SUVs in Malmö, Gothen­burg and Sundsvall.

The Indi­ans would like to rec­om­mend this form of direct action to all like-mind­ed groups. If selec­tive SUV-dis­ar­ma­ment is done repeat­ed­ly and on a mas­sive scale, it will devel­op from a slight annoy­ance in the eyes of the own­ers into a real obsta­cle for dri­ving the things, thus putting an end to per­haps the most obnox­ious aspect of bour­geois car­bon addic­tion. Imag­ine wak­ing up to a car with­out air in the tyres every morn­ing, or even once a week! It’s not a com­pli­cat­ed manoeu­vre: just unscrew the cap of the valve, insert a grain of grav­el or stone in it, and screw it back on. The grain will push down the peg in the mid­dle of the valve, mak­ing sure the air is gen­tly released. The whole manoeu­vre will take about 10 sec­onds. Leave the SUV, and lis­ten to the beau­ti­ful sound of the air peter­ing out.

Let­ter to SUV own­ers:
Your SUV kills!
We have deflat­ed one or sev­er­al tyres of your SUV. Don’t take it per­son­al. It’s your car we don’t like. You are cer­tain­ly aware of the large amount of fuel it con­sumes, so we don’t have to enlight­en you about that. But either you are igno­rant of, or you don’t care about the fact that all the gas you con­sume by dri­ving around in your SUV in the streets of the city has dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences for oth­ers. Sci­en­tists are entire­ly sure that we are very close to push­ing cli­mate change over a thresh­old, into a phase where it will be total­ly out of con­trol.

When the glac­i­ers melt, people’s source of water dis­ap­pear. When the deserts spread, agri­cul­tur­al fields become uncul­tivable. When the sea lev­el ris­es, homes are inun­dat­ed. Result: bil­lions of refugees, count­less deaths. It’s already esti­mat­ed that 160 000 peo­ple die every year due to the effects of cli­mate change, accord­ing to the WHO.
As an afflu­ent Swede you will sur­vive longer then most. Those most vul­ner­a­ble, and already worst afflict­ed by the glob­al warm­ing caused by North­ern afflu­ence, are the peo­ple of poor coun­tries. In the end, how­ev­er, cli­mate chaos will affect us all, poor peo­ple as well as rich.

This does not have to hap­pen if we impose a rad­i­cal cut on car­bon emis­sions. Now.
Not tomor­row. That’s why we have dis­armed your SUV by deflat­ing the tires.
Since you live in a city with a func­tion­ing and acces­si­ble pub­lic trans­porta­tion sys­tem you will have no prob­lem going where you want with­out your SUV.

Tara Valley Ireland Action Stations — actions & callout for 6th/7th; route walk/action videos — 6th Sept update

22.08.2007

Cul­tur­al Con­ser­va­tion­ists stop work on Tara val­ley, Ire­lands heart of ancient her­itage, by M3 Cli­mate Crim­i­nals.

22.08.2007

Cul­tur­al Con­ser­va­tion­ists stop work on Tara val­ley, Ire­lands heart of ancient her­itage, by M3 Cli­mate Crim­i­nals.
Inter­na­tion­al Cli­mate Con­cern actions start ear­ly for front­line Earth defence activists.

Live­ly actions were car­ried out on the route of the pro­posed M3 motor­way being plunged through the ancient astro­log­i­cal city com­plex of Tara in Ire­land .This area is known as the Val­ley of the Kings, it is in fact old­er than the val­ley of the kings in Egypt.

Taras knowl­edge and mes­sage still await full revelation.The destruc­tion MUST BE STOPPED.

On thurs. a medi­um sized possee(12 plus) of con­cerned cit­i­zens took a route walk. This began by Inspect­ing the destruc­tion of the Lis­mullen 8,000 year old henge ( arche­ol­o­gy by record ‚draw­ing plans of where all the posts are then, bag­ging and bull­doz­ing) .

We viewed the henge from the hill­side of Rath Lugh the hill fort of the Fian­na the war­riors and pro­tec­tors of Ire­land whose grave­yards are now being des­e­crat­ed and bull­dozed.

The mag­i­cal mys­tery time trav­el­ling tour then pro­ceed­ed to Barons town and Col­lier­stown. Where a gate was block­ad­ed, songs sung and a live­ly debate was had with site secu­ri­ty. We then head­ed of at a trot fol­lowed by a very small con­tin­gent of secu­ri­ty, we kept ahead and man­aged to delay a dig­ger at work for some time till we decide to move on, the plan had been to keep mov­ing and slow up work in many places gueril­la stylee.
We took a break then rushed back onto site to stop the same dig­ger again this time for longer three peo­ple climb­ing onto the roof singing, ignor­ing the secu­ri­tys calls to get down and bang­ing on the roof of the cab till the dri­ver exit­ed left the cab. We then decid­ed to move as the Gar­dai (police) arrived (reac­tion time about 25–30 mins.)

We kept ahead of most secu­ri­ty and laughed much as their 4 wheel dri­ve got stuck in the deep mud. Mud surfers and dig­ger divers required or cul­tur­al con­ser­va­tion­ists as some media have dubbed the con­cerned cit­i­zens of the Emer­ald Isles.

We returned to the first gate and a few of us rushed into a site where about 4 dig­gers and oth­er big trucks were work­ing, Although health and safe­ty law rec­quires the machines to shut down when we are on site ‚these machines car­ried on, most turn off and are fair­ly ami­ca­ble when talked to .

Many of the secu­ri­ty work­ers and even the Guardai have expressed they do not want the road to go this way.
There is and alter­na­tive Meath Coun­ty mul­ti-way pro­pos­al which includes reopen­ing an unused rail­way, a park and ride alter­na­tive routes around the val­ley which are cheap­er and short­er.

One of the keys is cor­rup­tion: Which groups real­ly have bought up the val­ley and stand to make astro­nom­i­cal prof­its from the devel­op­ments that will be built in the val­ley.

Friends of the Fian­na Fail rul­ing par­ty it seems.In con­tra­ven­tion of Euro­pean law. As well as Cor­po­rate giants such as Dick Cheneys Hal­ibur­ton and the Span­ish mega build­ing com­pa­ny set up by Gen­er­al Fran­co called Far­rovial (Now large own­ers of Lon­dons Tube Under­ground and most of the toll motor­ways in South Amer­i­ca)

The action con­tin­ued as the gar­dai caught up and the cross coun­try run began.The younger fit­ter activis­tas man­aged to keep ahead, and the Guard on foot with 2 secu­ri­ty gave up after a few hun­dred metres of mud and rough ground, how­ev­er the next few gates to the road were cov­ered by secu­ri­ty and police vans as we tried to make our exit .So we head­ed deep­er cross coun­try and by chance came across anoth­er dig­ger on route not work­ing ‚this pro­ceed­ed to run away at slow 4mph speed we laughed and fol­lowed it 300m on there was anoth­er dig­ger which saw us, 2 face paint­ed men one in a kilt and a young women armed with a drum. This fright­en­ing spec­ta­cle caused the sec­ond dig­ger to flee at its ridicu­lous top speed we con­tin­ued to laugh.

We stopped these 2 work­ing for some time then secu­ri­ty turned up we went to leave as a sec­ond land rover screached around a cor­ner we ran. We man­aged to escape by div­ing through 2 ditch­es and 2 hedges a van full of secu­ri­ty that arrived seemed reluc­tant to fol­low the man in a kilt through a thorny hedge so close to clock­ing off time.

Our sis­ter was caught but mirac­u­lous­ly released. She was sur­round­ed by 13 secu­ri­ty who told her to come to wait for the guards. She said she would stay there let them come to her also that they could not move her and that this road was ille­gal .They said by who …she said under EU law. She said she had come to pro­tect land and ances­tors and began to ques­tion them on their actions which must have shamed them as after a few min­utes this cap­tive audi­ence of secu­ri­ty told her she was free to go.

It seems some­times the Gar­dai were reluc­tant to arrest due to media cov­er­age. But not always as over 7 have been arrest­ed par­ti­cilar­ly at the bat­tle of Sol­diers Hill 3 weeks ago. Since which most destruc­tion of ancient sites has occured. Some by bull­doz­ers in the mid­dle of the night. So we all had a a day of high adren­a­lin action and fun and escaped to resist the motor­way mad­ness cli­mate crim­i­nals anoth­er day.

On Fri­day we got up at 6.30a.m. to the sound of Trum­pet drum and calls of por­ridge and coffee..A big pos­see.
We block­ad­ed the gate of the Lis­mullen Henge as the Nation­al Road Author­i­ty spon­sored arche­ol­o­gists arrived sham­ing them. The gate hug­ging was good natured with much singing “u cant kill the spir­it of Tara” and oth­er songs. Except for when a gar­dai pushed a young Irish lad back­wards over the edge of the bridge, nar­row­ly escap­ing falling. His appar­ent crime was to ask the Gar­dai to speak to him in Gael­ic (which all Gar­dai are required to speak).

We then regrouped and got 25 of us into 5 cars and hit the gates of the Roestown site run­ning. We spread out over 7–800 m and dig­ger div­ing occu­pied 7–8 dig­gers stop­ping a total of over 15 machines from car­ry­ing on their destruc­tion and des­e­cra­tion. For pic­tures of what Roestown used to be check www.tarasolidarityvigil.net
This action was high­ly effec­tive after about an hour and a half the gar­dai got peo­ple to leave machin­ery some as slow­ly as pos­si­ble .oth­ers pre­fer­ring to pull out across coun­try.
We met up again for food at the vig­il camp then some of us head­ed to Dublin for a Green man meets the Green Par­ty action .

On Sat. there was a demo out­side the G.P.O. in Dublin hand­ing out over 600 leaflets.
All in all 3 days of high action and adven­ture. Adren­a­lin fuelled earth defense.
Very rem­i­nis­cent of Twyford Down, Sols­bury Hill and New­bury.

Tara urgent­ly needs expe­ri­enced activists. Hear the call of the Ances­tors and the Land. Net­work it NOW
Tara sup­port is crit­i­cal­ly need­ed NOW as the E.U. told Ire­land to stop build­ing in June and is tak­ing the Irish govt. to court on Aug 29th how effec­tive this will be we don’t know as always it is up to peo­ple pow­er and direct action.Ancient sites and knowl­edge being lost for­ev­er dai­ly Bulldozing.Take Action.What will we say to Future gen­er­a­tions of this time. Take action for a clean­er cli­mate. There will soon be an action to replant trees along the Tara Val­ley and ener­gise the pro­posed Unesco World Her­itage Park.

Wish List:Trees, Tarps, structures,tents, food, longer range CBs ‚binoc­u­lars, climb­ing har­ness­es and rope, tools, tech stuff,photocopying, net­work­ing, transport.skillsharing Press and media sup­port, dona­tions, phone cred­it.

Trans­port Links £16 Nat express to Dublin or £26 Rail and sail from Euston Lon­don.
Then 7 Euro Bus to Tara Cross 20–25 mins walk from Tara Vig­il camp.Get there any way u can. As soon as u can
Vig­il Camp 00353(0) 861758557
Rath Lugh Action camp 00353( 0) 867372983

www.tarapixie.net
www.savetara.com
www.circlecommunity.org
www.tarwatch.org
www.tarasolidarityvigil.net
www.indymedia.ie
www.indymedia.org.uk

Keep net­work­ing
Net­work It Speak it Text It Email It hear the call.

»»»»»»»»»»

This is a mes­sage for activists who are up for help­ing the Irish pro­test­ers in their fight to avert the new M3 motor­way away from an extreme­ly ancient site, far pre­dat­ing Ston­henge.

Irish Author­i­ties are over­rid­ing an EU con­dem­na­tion that this part of the motor­way’s con­struc­tion is ILLEGAL and are about to bull­doze a recent­ly exca­vat­ed wood­henge, details below. The deep lev­els of cor­rup­tion involved in the ‘devel­op­ment’ of this area are mind bog­gling.

There has been a small but strong protest camp at Tara since before the new year and now these amaz­ing peo­ple are cry­ing out for num­bers. I’ve lit­er­al­ly just got home to Bris­tol now and will be dri­ving back over
there in 10 days, next Tues­day. It was almost impos­si­ble to leave.

The author­i­ties are propos­ing to start dis­man­tling the henge THIS TUESDAY 28TH AUGUST in the ear­ly hours of the morn­ing so please please please, if you’ve been con­sid­er­ing a trip to Ire­land go now. Even if you haven’t, despite the heart­break of what is hap­pen­ing there, you can’t help being over­whelmed with the atmos­phere of the place. It’s done me so much good to be there. There are 2 camps, one up on the hill of tara itself, and one in the woods at Rath Lugh, where the henge, known as Lis­mullin is sit­u­at­ed.

Direct action is in progress but our help is urgent­ly need­ed.

Road protests are new in Ire­land as we all know it has remained unspoiled for hun­dreds of years, so peo­ple with direct action expe­ri­ence are crit­i­cal­ly need­ed.

Nation­al Express do a fun­fare from Lon­don to Cork via Bris­tol on bus & boat from £15 each way. If there are fun­fares avail­able on dif­fer­ent routes it will offer them if you click on Europe on their home­page and put in your trav­el details.

If you take the Lon­don — Bris­tol — Cork route get off the boat at Wex­ford, take a bus or train to Dublin then the 109 bus from Busaras Sta­tion towards Navan and Kells. Tara is about 50 min­utes down this route. The dri­ver will tell you where to get off. There’s a camp phone num­ber at the bot­tom, or if you want to ask any­thing please get in touch. If you take a night cross­ing you can sleep and be at Tara by lunchtime.

If you can, please get there for Mon 6th/Tues 7th. Oth­er­wise there will be a van leav­ing Bris­tol next week, or alter­na­tive­ly, there is anoth­er wave planned for Sat­ur­day 1st Sep­tem­ber. It would be great to get a van from Lon­don and Bris­tol organ­ised. A cou­ple of surges of num­bers and a huge spread­ing the word could still avert the road plans to any of the oth­er 5, less dam­ag­ing pro­posed routes. But noth­ing i say will com­pare to the feel­ing of being there, and then under­stand­ing why we’d be doing the right thing to pro­tect it.

www.myspace.com/hilloftara
www.tarapixie.net
www.savatara.com
www.tarawatch.org

Thurs­day 16 August, pro­tes­tors walked the route of the M3 motor­way to view what destruc­tion of the ancient sites in Tara Val­ley have already dis­ap­peared. Then they decid­ed on a lit­tle direct action.

20070816_Tara_Route_Walk_Direct_Action — video/x‑ms-wmv 18M

20070816_Tara_Route_Walk_Direct_Action — video/quicktime 16M

Fri­day 17 August, the Inter­na­tion­al Cul­ture Con­ser­va­tion­ists joined the Save Tara cam­paign in a human block­ade to stop the con­struc­tion com­pa­ny-backed archae­ol­o­gists from enter­ing the site.

20070917_Human_Blockades — video/x‑ms-wmv 18M
20070917_Human_Blockades — video/quicktime 14M

At 6.30am peo­ple rose on the camp to hit the road to the Lis­mullen Henge ear­ly. Using their own bod­ies they stopped all traf­fic enter­ing the site.

The human block­ade was cheer­ful and full of good spir­it. But when the Gar­da arrived one offi­cer grabbed a pro­tes­tor and attempt­ed to throw him over the wall of a bridge.

——

Fol­low­ing the archae­ol­o­gist block­ade, the Save Tara activists and Inter­na­tion­al Cul­tur­al Con­ser­va­tion­ists invad­ed the Roestown site to halt work.

Video 20070717_Roestown_Site_Invasion — video/x‑ms-wmv 16M

20070717_Roestown_Site_Invasion — video/quicktime 13M

Quick­time ver­sion of the video.

15 Machines were halt­ed in the action, bring­ing work to a stand­still.

——

Text mes­sages received just now, Thurs­day 6 Sep­tem­ber, said more inter­na­tion­als have arrived at Tara, tripods and lock-ons are in place at Rath Lugh.

call out for a week of direct action at Hill of Tara, Ireland — starts Sat 1st September 2007

Defend Tara now!

World Her­itage site under attack

Shit is kick­ing off down at Tara/Skryne and the Val­ley of the White Mare, which is part of the ancient com­plex of TARA.

Defend Tara now!

World Her­itage site under attack

Shit is kick­ing off down at Tara/Skryne and the Val­ley of the White Mare, which is part of the ancient com­plex of TARA.

Dig­gers are cur­rent­ly on site work­ing in direct defi­ance of EU orders. Des­e­crat­ing sacred land, destroy­ing trees, carv­ing into neolith­ic hill forts and rip­ping up ances­tral graves, these bas­tards are prepar­ing the route of the M3, a four lane motor­way.

Also they have recent­ly dis­cov­ered a wood­en henge (world her­itage site) 6000BC, pre­dat­ing Stone­henge and the Pyra­mids.

HELP is des­per­ate­ly need­ed as there’s only a hand­ful of pro­test­ers doing their best to defend over 40 ancient sites along the 80km route. Please come along and con­tribute by shar­ing skills and show­ing your sup­port. Any amount of time you can give is valu­able.

The Camp needs food, finan­cial, moral and spir­i­tu­al sup­port, plus equip­ment such as tarps, mobiles, car mobile phone charg­ers, flasks and bat­ter­ies.

HOW TO GET THERE

CAR: take the N3 and then turn left at the TARA sign­post.
FERRY/BUS: get a fer­ry to Dublin fer­ry port, and then take either the Navan, Kells or Cavan bus which leave from Busarus. Get off at TARA CROSS and it is a short walk from there. Tick­ets £26 one way.
COACH: Dublin super saver 19 quid.

For fur­ther infor­ma­tion: 086 1758557 (text and get a call back).

For more see www.tarapixie.net

next Manchester critical mass 31st august

next crit­i­cal mass is on fri­day 31st august (thats the week­end AFTER bank hol­i­day) meet as usu­al at 6pm out­side cen­tral library.

The ride will fin­ish at the con­tact the­atre where the all new, all female, all bike lov­ing, bicy­cle dance troupe THE SPOKES will per­form their new rou­tine for the first time in pub­lic EVER!!!

next crit­i­cal mass is on fri­day 31st august (thats the week­end AFTER bank hol­i­day) meet as usu­al at 6pm out­side cen­tral library.

The ride will fin­ish at the con­tact the­atre where the all new, all female, all bike lov­ing, bicy­cle dance troupe THE SPOKES will per­form their new rou­tine for the first time in pub­lic EVER!!!
http://www.myspace.com/thespokesmcr

To get in the Get Bent spir­it wear any­thing sil­ver or pink or fan­cy dress or get in the spokes’ colours green and black…dress your bike too…lets get cre­ative!

then those who want to can come into the Con­tact The­atre for the Get Bent Film Fes­ti­val for more info on Get Bent see http://get-bent-manchester.com

put it in your diaries NOW!!! woooooo!

mcrcriticalmass@yahoo.co.uk
http://www.ibikemcr.org.uk

New Earth First Action Update OUT NOW!

The print­ed EF! Action Update is back again! After a bit of a lull a new edi­to­r­i­al col­lec­tive is in place and ready to roll. We have just pro­duced a sum­mer edi­tion in time for the Camp for Cli­mate Action, where you can pick up print­ed copies.

EF! AU logo 1The print­ed EF! Action Update is back again! After a bit of a lull a new edi­to­r­i­al col­lec­tive is in place and ready to roll. We have just pro­duced a sum­mer edi­tion in time for the Camp for Cli­mate Action, where you can pick up print­ed copies.

The Action Update is pro­duced quar­ter­ly to aid the shar­ing of news, infor­ma­tion and ideas amongst those inter­est­ed in tak­ing action. The next newslet­ter will be out in Novem­ber. If you’ve got news to share about your groups, cam­paigns and actions post them straight onto this web­site and we’ll make sure they’re includ­ed in the next edi­tion.

You can also down­load and print out the PDF of the Action Update by click­ing here.

Critical Mass — Glossop — Fri 14th Sept 2007

We’re stag­ing a Crit­i­cal Mass bike ride on 14th Sep­tem­ber 2007, to cel­e­brate Car Free Day and to demon­strate that bikes and peo­ple should be catered for on our roads, not just cars and traf­fic.

We’ll be set­ting off from Glos­sop rain sta­tion at 5.30pm and will be rid­ing out to Swal­low’s Wood near Tin­twistle where we’ll stop at a local pub. The wood is threat­ened by a new bypass they are plan­ning to build between Mot­tram and Tin­twistle.

Critical Mass graphic 10We’re stag­ing a Crit­i­cal Mass bike ride on 14th Sep­tem­ber 2007, to cel­e­brate Car Free Day and to demon­strate that bikes and peo­ple should be catered for on our roads, not just cars and traf­fic.

We’ll be set­ting off from Glos­sop rain sta­tion at 5.30pm and will be rid­ing out to Swal­low’s Wood near Tin­twistle where we’ll stop at a local pub. The wood is threat­ened by a new bypass they are plan­ning to build between Mot­tram and Tin­twistle.

The route is fair­ly flat and about 4 miles in total. It’s suit­able for rid­ers of all types. Please bring a bike and wear high vis cloth­ing.

Our aim is not to stop traf­fic but to make the pres­ence of bikes on the roads more vis­i­ble so please be aware of oth­er traf­fic and road users.

roadalertglossop@gmail.com
http://www.myspace.com/roadalert

reports of critical masses & London video

Anoth­er Lon­don Crit­i­cal Mass police has­sle.

Police rou­tine­ly inter­fere with Crit­i­cal Mass, hold­ing up the front of the ride, tar­get­ing sound sys­tems and some­times tick­et­ing rid­ers. They also video and pho­to­graph rid­ers at the start of every event. It is odd though that they nev­er turn up for the Decem­ber ride, which is close to the New year cel­e­bra­tions.

Anoth­er Lon­don Crit­i­cal Mass police has­sle.

Police rou­tine­ly inter­fere with Crit­i­cal Mass, hold­ing up the front of the ride, tar­get­ing sound sys­tems and some­times tick­et­ing rid­ers. They also video and pho­to­graph rid­ers at the start of every event. It is odd though that they nev­er turn up for the Decem­ber ride, which is close to the New year cel­e­bra­tions.

They just had to spoil it did­n’t they. In what would have been a fast and flu­id Mass with no holdups at junc­tions and the police pro­vid­ing use­ful cork­ing, they decid­ed to shut down a sound sys­tem in Park Lane, well out­side the SOCPA zone, and hold up traf­fic by so doing. It is as if the police are des­per­ate to assert their author­i­ty one way or anoth­er. Maybe they have dif­fi­cul­ty try­ing to jus­ti­fy such a large police pres­ence and expense on rou­tine cycle rides. Luck­i­ly the sound sys­tem bod emerged from his unpleas­ant police encounter unscathed and with a smile on his face.

Video Part 1 — video/mp4 18M
Video Video part 2 — video/mp4 22M
The raw video is over two hours long and was made with a hel­met cam. It has been edit­ed down into two parts total­ing 11 min­utes.
—————–

Cabinet refuses consultation with Herefordshire public: ‘Hereford Eight Arrested’

July 12 2007 — Here­ford­shire Coun­cil Cab­i­net refused this after­noon to guar­an­tee that they would con­sult with the pub­lic or even allow full coun­cil to debate the future of the Dine­dor Ser­pent.

July 12 2007 — Here­ford­shire Coun­cil Cab­i­net refused this after­noon to guar­an­tee that they would con­sult with the pub­lic or even allow full coun­cil to debate the future of the Dine­dor Ser­pent.

Cab­i­net mem­ber Cllr. June French told reporters and pro­test­ers that it would not be an agen­da item today, but that it would be dis­cussed at an unspec­i­fied future date. She could not guar­an­tee that it would be debat­ed by the full coun­cil or allowed a vote. Cllr. French announced an inter­nal inquiry into how the coun­cil had han­dled the pub­lic­i­ty around the Ser­pent.

8 pro­test­ers sub­se­quent­ly refused to leave the Coun­cil build­ing until Cab­i­net mem­bers guar­an­teed a full pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion. When this guar­an­tee was not forth­com­ing, the prostestors, includ­ing an elder­ly peo­ple, refused to leave. They were peace­ful­ly escort­ed from the premis­es by the police.

Update 10:15pm: The pro­test­ers were arrest­ed on charges of ‘aggres­sive tres­pass’. They have just been released on bail hav­ing spent sev­er­al hours in police cells in Worces­ter and are expect­ed back in Here­ford short­ly. They will have to report back on July 26th and face either a cau­tion or be tak­en to court.

“All the Coun­cil had to do today was guar­an­tee a prop­er pub­lic debate, and then this would not have hap­pened”, said a cam­paign spokesper­son. “What do they have to hide? Those arrest­ed are the Here­ford suf­fragettes — all because Here­ford­shire Coun­cil won’t be open and demo­c­ra­t­ic in it’s pro­ce­dures.”

Calls con­tin­ue to grow for Here­ford­shire Coun­cil to pause con­struc­tion to allow a full pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion and for all elect­ed coun­cil­lors to have a say in the final deci­sion and not just the Cab­i­net.

Back­ground info & oth­er cam­paign news at http://www.rotherwasribbon.com/

For court case updates, see July 2007 archive.

critical masses (reports from end June/beginning July 2007)

Man­ches­ter:Ace mass on fri­day woo! despite all the stu­dents being away for the sum­mer there was still an ace turnout of around 30–40 people.nice. and a few stayed for a nice bbq in the park which was real love­ly.

Man­ches­ter:Ace mass on fri­day woo! despite all the stu­dents being away for the sum­mer there was still an ace turnout of around 30–40 people.nice. and a few stayed for a nice bbq in the park which was real love­ly.

Crit­i­cal mass has a my space account
here:http://www.myspace.com/mcrcriticalmass
and a face­book account here:
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=597661675&ref=mf

also an email list at http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/manccriticalmass

so if you have pho­tos or film of the mass­es please post or upload them or email for the pass­words and i’ll send them out to you. also please use these and this list to dis­cuss ideas and calls for help with future events for after the crit­i­cal mass. In the past we’ve had ben­e­fit gigs, par­ty in the woods, film nights, meals, beers in pubs, pic­nics, bike polo work­shops, art exhi­bi­tion, roller races etc etc. It would be ace if every­one could be involved in organ­is­ing these. maybe we could even get togeth­er a lit­tle cm events work­ing group..would any­one be inter­est­ed in this? we could get togeth­er either after cm or in the month to share ideas, organ­i­sa­tion and tasks.

these things can be dis­cussed on this list or on myspace com­ments or on the face­book note or wall

ALSO
At pre­vi­ous crit­i­cal mass­es in Man­ches­ter we decid­ed on the fol­low­ing tips to ensure that we are all safe,that we cause least annoy­ance as pos­si­ble, to make sure the ride stays togeth­er and to ensure that every­one feels com­fort­able. Remem­ber some­times peo­ple on crit­i­cal mass come because it is a chance to reclaim the road and to feel safe, peo­ple who would­nt usu­al­ly ride in cen­tral man­ches­ter and also chil­dren, so its good to keep the nice friend­ly atmos­phere to encour­age cycling and that safe environment…if peo­ple want to dis­cuss these its great, they were points that were agreed at sev­er­al crit­i­cal mass­es by peo­ple shout­ing and wav­ing hands and that kind of thing. there is no organ­is­er and every­one should be able to have their say. (in a way that is respon­si­ble and look­ing after each oth­er)

1. If the light goes on red as the ride approach­es the lights we stop and wait for green.
2. If the light changes part way through the ride get­ting through around 2 peo­ple per lane of oncom­ing traf­fic stop and cork the road. This basi­cal­ly means that they stand in the mid­dle of that lane hold­ing up their hand/ a sign say­ing ‘thank you for wait­ing’ so that cars will stop and let the ride stay togeth­er and go through the light safe­ly. Thank­ing the dri­vers when every­one is through..we are try­ing to get dri­vers onto bikes not to hate us!!!
3. Slow­er rid­ers and chil­dren and peo­ple with less con­fi­dence ride at the front of the ride and to the left hand side so that they can set the pace and help to stay togeth­er and also feel safer as they are less like­ly to be near traffic/ annoyed dri­vers.
4. We don’t have a set route for crit­i­cal mass, instead who­ev­er is at the front at the time can choose where we go, so we take it in turns! just shout left or right or straight on in plen­ty of time!
5. Have fun!

Future crit­i­cal mass dates are

MEET CENTRAL LIBRARY 6PM FRIDAY:
27th July
31st August
28th Sep­tem­ber
26th Octo­ber
30th Novem­ber
28th Decem­ber

2008
25th Jan­u­ary
29th Feb­ru­ary (woo leap year!)
28th March
etc etc

Lon­don: Crit­i­cal Mass 29th June — The June Crit­i­cal Mass, with a few hun­dred cyclists, was a fun ride through the City and Hol­born and man­aged to stay dry the whole way through!

Sev­er­al hun­dred peo­ple left Water­loo bridge at about 7pm, cycling across Black­fri­ars bridge, along Ludgate Hill, past the Muse­um of Lon­don and onto Liv­er­pool Street sta­tion. After some cir­cling of Fins­bury Cir­cus the mass kept mov­ing on to Old Street where we had a brief rest. Mov­ing off the mass head­ed for Cam­bridge Cir­cus along Theobalds road and High Hol­born. From there it moved up and along Oxford Street and down to West­min­ster Square where there were some skir­mish­es with the cops over the sound sys­tem (see the account: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/06/374738.html)

It was a fun ride. The police for the most part seemed to keep their dis­tance. Enter­tain­ing­ly a cou­ple of police start­ed head bob­bing to the music in Old Street — I’m hop­ing some­one got a film of it! Let’s hope next month is slight­ly sun­nier though.

Edin­burgh: It went pret­ty well. Around 50 peo­ple. Con­sid­er­ably more than last month. There was no police inter­ven­tion, apart from pre­vent­ing all vehi­cles to go across North Bridge, since it was shut again. We sim­ply divert­ed down Lei­th Street, went all the way round the round­about, then along Queen Street to the mead­ows from there. In the last 5 min­utes the heav­ens opened.

Glas­gow got the sun and a ride out to the West End com­plete with bike lifts and a film screen­ing after­wards.

July York Crit­i­cal Mass Ride Small but Suc­cess­ful

Well, it was­n’t a big ride, with just 19 peo­ple tak­ing part, but we had fun, made cycling vis­i­ble and encoun­tered some com­plete idiots who need their 2 ton weapons remov­ing from beneath them. The dri­ver of a bright red Audi on Nun­nery Lane expend­ed much petrol revving, over­tak­ing (twice) and gen­er­al­ly being an idiot with­out any gain for him­self, oth­er than a nice pic­ture show­ing that he, like a notable group of York’s dri­vers, has no con­cern what­so­ev­er for cycle lanes or cyclists. No one was hurt, but as one per­son put it lat­er “we gave as good as we got”, ver­bal­ly of course.

Next months ride will prob­a­bly also be small, but that’s no excuse not to show up. On Fri­day August 3rd we’ll be return­ing to the streets of York to pro­mote cycling, sus­tain­abil­i­ty and fun, same time and same place.